Dan sighed.  “Okay.  You’ve got a point.  But still...”

She reached across the counter and grasped his hand.

“Have faith, Dan.  We’re not alone in this.  Everything’s going to work out.  Just believe.”

Dan looked into her eyes and squeezed her hand in return.

“I used to believe in us, and look what happened to that.”

Carrie’s heart sank.  Not this again.

“Dan...we’ve been through this already.  Something bigger than you and I has come into our lives and we have to put our own wants and desires aside.  You said you understood.”

“I do.  At least partially.  But even if I understood fully, I’d still be hurting.  I haven’t been able to put out the fire so easily.”

But you must, she thought, hurting for him.  You must.

“Don’t the miracles make it easier?” she said, hoping to see the pain fade in his eyes.  “Don’t they make you feel a part of something glorious?”

“The cures are wonderful.”

“And they happened because of us!  The blind see, the terminally ill are cured, the deranged become lucid.  Because we brought her here.”

“I just hope those same miracles aren’t our downfall.  Look what’s happening around us.  People are seeing the Virgin Mary everywhere, the streets are acrawl with epidemiologists by day and Mary-hunters by night, there’s a candlelight vigil on every other corner, and every AIDS patient in the city seems to be trying to move to the Lower East Side.  It’s getting crazier by the minute out there.  It all seems to be building toward something.  But what?  And if someone puts all the pieces together, we may find ourselves in big trouble, a lot more trouble than we can handle.”

Carrie just shook her head.  Didn’t Dan know?  Couldn’t he feel it?  Everything was going to be fine.

‡

She is here.

Kesev had sensed that the instant his flight had touched down at JFK.  Now he sat on a filthy bench in a litter-strewn park named after Sara D. Roosevelt, whoever she was.  On the far side of the chainlink fence, across Forsythe Street, stretched a row of dilapidated houses, worse than in the poorest sections of the Arab Quarter in Jerusalem, except for the brightly colored and well kept building on the corner, the only clean structure on the block.  Kesev had found it especially interesting because of the six-pointed star of David in the circular window near the top of its front gable.  He’d thought it a temple at first, but had been confused by the inscription over the entrance: Templo Adventista del Septimo

But much closer at hand—directly in front of him—was a hoarse-voiced street preacher.  Lacking anything better to do, Kesev listened to his rant.

“Forget not what Saint Paul said to the Thessalonians: ‘The Day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.’  The End Times are soon upon us.  First there will come the Rapture, then the Tribulation, and then the Son of God will come again.  But only those who believe, only those who are saved will be caught up in the Rapture and spared the Tribulation.  As Paul said to his church: ‘But you, brothers, are not in darkness that that day will overcome you like a thief...For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain deliverance by our Lord Jesus Christ!’  Heed those words.  Repent, believe, be not caught unprepared!”

“Amen, brothers!” cried his helper or disciple or whatever one might call the little man who followed him around like a puppy.  “Amen!  Preacher should know!  Preacher was blind and now he can see!  He sees everything!”

“First will come war—and that is already here.  Then will come plague and famine and plague—listen to the news and you’ll know that a plague is crouched in the wings, waiting to spring—followed by worldwide starvation.  There will be a great shaking of the earth, the skies will darken, the seas will die, the river Jordan shall run red.”

What nonsense is this? Kesev thought irritably.  While I suffer the frustration of my fruitless search for the Mother, must I also suffer the words of fools and madmen?  If he doesn’t shut up I will wring his neck.  And that of his prancing disciple as well.

Weeks here and no luck.  Roaming these mean, sinister streets at night, hearing of the apparition, rushing to its reported location, always too late to see it.  The frustration was making him ill tempered, building to a murderous rage.  If something didn’t break soon...

She must be aware that I am here.  Why is she toying with me?

“Repent, brothers and sisters,” Preacher said.  “Repent and take Jesus as your Lord.  For the dark End Times are soon upon us, followed by the dawn of the Second Coming of the Lord!”

“Listen to him!” the little sidekick said.  “Listen!”

But the half-dozen people who had paused a moment to listen to the raggedy man had heard it all before, so they moved on.  And with no audience, the man called Preacher and his lone disciple moved on as well.

Leaving Kesev and a thin, sickly-looking old man sharing the bench.

Good riddance, Kesev thought.

‡

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio shifted his weight on the bench as he watched the Preacher shuffle off.  His wasted buttocks offered no padding against the hard, rough planked surface.  He wanted to get up and continue his search for the vision, but he didn’t know which way to go in the fading light.

Fading like my body, he thought.  Like my life.  Slowly, steadily, inexorably.

He was beginning to think his chance to see the vision again would never come.  He’d been traveling down from the Vatican mission to the Lower East Side night after night, hoping, praying, beseeching God and Jesus and Mary herself to honor him with the vision once more, just once more before the cancer took him.  It had become a contest of sorts, a race between the tumor and his determination to last until he saw her again.

He glanced at the bearded man a few feet to his right.

“Do you think he’s right?” he said.

The bearded man started, as if surprised that someone would speak to him.  Most New Yorkers were shocked initially when a stranger like Vincenzo opened a conversation with them.

“Sorry.  Do I think who is right?”

A strange accent.  Middle Eastern, certainly, but where?  The features framed by the beard and dark hair were Semitic.  A Palestinian?

“That preacher.  Do you think we’re headed for the Second Coming?”

“You mean, the Second Coming of the Master?”

Vincenzo wondered at this fellow’s use of the term, “the Master.”  Surely he was referring to Christ.  Who else could be expected at the Second Coming.  But it was such an archaic reference, the way the early church referred to Jesus.

“The Second Coming of Jesus, yes.  Do you—?”

The bearded man shot to his feet.  “Good-bye.  I must be going.”

“If you must.  Perhaps we’ll meet some other time.”

“I do not think so.”

He walked off.

Vincenzo wondered if he was another “Mary-hunter,” as one of the local papers had dubbed the hordes of faithful roaming the Lower East Side streets in search of the Blessed Virgin.

Perhaps, perhaps not, Vincenzo thought as he pushed himself to his feet.  But certainly something strange about that fellow. Not very friendly, which he supposed was to be expected in New York, but this fellow was almost furtive.

As he crossed Pearl Street, a man ran out of an alley, frantically waving his arms in the dusk.

“OhmyGod!  OhmyGod!  I think I saw her!  I think it’s her!”

Vincenzo’s heart leapt.  “Where?”

As the fellow pointed toward the black maw of the alley behind him, Vincenzo tried in vain to make out his features in the dusky light.

“Back there!  She was just standing there, glowing.”

“Show me,” Vincenzo said.  “Please show me!”

“Sure,” the fellow said, waving him to follow.  “Come on!”

An alarm clanged faintly in a corner of Vincenzo’s brain, but his mind was too suffused with glorious anticipation to pay it proper heed.